This past weekend we had the slightly odd battle of pinky red and gloopy yellow in the Splatoon 2 Splatfest, which was both gross and entertaining at the same time. The battle between Ketchup and Mayo was fought in North America and PAL territories, and there was one unanimous winner.

It was a sweep for Mayo, in the end. Nintendo of America declared first, including the Australia and New Zealand results.

That was posted while the European battle was still raging, but the results were the same in the end. Again we had Ketchup winning the popularity vote but Mayo winning the battles. It was even closer in Europe, with both solo and team categories coming out 51/49 in favour of Mayo.

That said, the team with less members overall always seems to win Splatfest. I'm really curious why that's the case. How exactly are the scores totaled? What became of the ketchup versus ketchup matches?

@thesilverbrick Proportionally there will be a roughly equal percentage of good v bad players on each side, but the more popular side has more 'poor' players. As the game will try and matchmake with the opposite team above all else, the likelihood of a poor team from popular side being matched up with a skilled team from less popular side is far greater, simply due to the number of people involved.

@AlexOlney Makes sense. Unfortunately this makes makes predicting the winner far too easy. When I'm undecided which side to join I typically choose the one that seems less popular in hopes to be on the winning side. In this case I found mayonnaise so repulsive that joining their cause was out of the question. I proudly accept my loss and am confident I chose the right side.

@AlexOlney : And those poor players super jump without a thought, getting both themselves and the teammate they jumped to killed. And this invariably happens with less than a minute remaining, when multiple deaths are fatal. They don't have Ninja Jump, nor do they know how to read the map to determine whether they are jumping into enemy fire. They also render my Ninja Jump irrelevant, because we'll jump to the same spot and 3 deaths result.

For the love of Ketchup, Alex, could you PLEASE do one of your amazing videos on the etiquette of super jumping?!? Otherwise, this plague upon capable Splatoon players will continue!

When I was able to actually fight mayo it was about 50/50 win/lose, maybe a little more wins for me. When I fought ketchup (which was 95% of the time...) my team won very consistently. Based on that I knew mayo would win.

I still find Mayo boring. It's just really tasteless and only tastes good in combination with Ketchup. When I saw Mayo won in NA and Japan, I had a gut feeling it would win overall. Can't wait for the next Splatfest. Hopefully it'll be a less one-sided theme this time.

Red and White were two ink colors I never thought I'd see in Splatoon. But to have them both in the same match? It was really entertaining (and a little gross). I did come across only ketchup players a lot during the Splatfest at first, but it seemed to even out towards the end. I figured it was just because there were way more Ketchup players than anything else, so matching with Mayo players probably wasn't going to be easy. And Ketchup vs Ketchup matches kept the Ketchup vs Mayo matches from being stale as I was only ever going to be red (Ketchup). I was so surprised we lost though - but then again, the teams I was on kept losing so...

Also - I did have a few connection issues, but nothing that stopped me playing in the middle of a match. Was still loads of fun though. And the rewards were totally worth.

Also, I thought the Splatfest was supposed to run the whole weekend. But for me, it seemed to start midday on Saturday and possibly finish sometime before 3pm on Sunday, which was when I got on. Was it actually just for 24 hours or something? Did I forget something?

Congrats for mayo, but I hope Nintendo somehow fixes the matchmaking for splatfests. Like so many others, I almost only fought people from my own team (ketchup) and it always felt like the teams were composed of 1-2 decent/good players and a bunch of... let's say "newer" ones. Also, what was up with the connection? I've never had problems playing with splatoon 2 online before, yet I couldn't count the amount of disconnects, 3v4 and even 2v4 that were happening.

Seriously, did anyone who has any cooking experience vote for ketchup? Mayonnaise compliments dishes much, much better, and you can use it with many more things, plus it's extremely easy to make some at home. Ketchup, however has a way too overpowering flavor, and it's not really good for anything other than hamburgers, hot dogs, and fries. Okay, the japanese put it on omurice as well, but that has like no flavor in itself, and it just tastes like ketchup with it.

For me, from 2AM to around 6AM I felt so overwhelmed by Team Mayo. I found myself alone half the time because the others kept dying off. Lost a bunch of matches where Ketchup had only 20's to 30's percent coverage, it was so frustrating, Grr! It was definitely the curse of being on the popular team.

Things evened out a bit towards the last couple hours, but I had a gut feeling Ketchup wasn't winning this one.

@Maxz Not surprised the popular choice in Japan was mayo, because they have Kewpie, after all. Actually, that was the sole reason I chose team Mayo! If it were to any other mayo brand, probably I would have been ketchup as well. Kewpie is so good and works pretty much with any food - well, any Japanese food at least

I also did my fair share of making mayo the winner, which I am very happy about, to be able to help my team! I also played against my team mates, but only once, I think. It was quite intense sometimes against ketchup, I was very competitive about it... And it was fun to imagine ketchup and mayo being poured all over the stages - the theme of this Splatfest was a perfect fit for the game! As you can see, I had much fun during my very first official Splatfest (missed them with Splatoon 1, bought it too late...) and am happy to have won it!

Half the time I played other Ketchup players, but at one point I knew ketchup was doomed. I would say that half of my matches against Mayonnaise included teammates that were content in standing in a corner, or following teammates, or painting areas that were already "red". My theory is that most of the younger Splatoon 2 players picked Ketchup. I'm not dumb, I know that there are kids who like mayonnaise, but I would bet that most kids would pick ketchup. I actually thought about this when I made my pick. I felt that mayonnaise would win but ultimately I went with what I actually liked better even though I like both.

All in all, it was a fun day. But I hope they come up with better choices for the next one. I'm hoping it's something more split down the middle. Nintendo should go back to the data they collected on the "Everybody Votes" channel on the Wii and find the closest votes!

@dkxcalibur I was Mayo and wondered if some of the "better players" would play as Mayo, because they cared less about the "versus choice" and more about the competition. Got my butt handed to me plenty by Ketchup, but would say my teams won 65-70 percent of the matches.

Also sometimes my connection error would say, "could not connect to the other user's console". Does that mean that they were easing off server stress by doing a sort of peer to peer thing with some of the Switch users? Not sure how that works.

@SteamedSquid Yes! But mayo can be used with many dishes, like as a dipping sauce mixed with something for seafoods, you can't make potato salad without it, and it instantly makes almost any sandwich like ten times better. Try it if you haven't!

@Krisi Isn't tartar sauce is basically just mayonaise and pickle relish, with a little lemon juice or horseradish, so it made sense here. Extremely great in covering some of that too far fishy in the fish taste.

@Darkhound1999 Only had one 3v4 match - but had a ton of errors. As far as the matchmaking goes, I feel like the real fix here would be to have Pearl get the more obviously popular "versus choice". Give Pearl pizza and Marina burgers (veggie/meat). I feel like that'd balance it. Maybe it's intentional though, when Marina eventually betrays everyone and becomes a villain, lol.

Connection errors were a bummer, Nintendo need to get their sh!t together will ALL of their online stuff. I haven't played Mario Kar tin months because of those probs.

@Anti-Matter Holy crap, that sound realllly good. I'll have to look for it at the huge asian market by me.

@dkxcalibur I've always been tepid on ketchup, because, when I was little I got this huge sliver in my foot and the antibacterial gooze this lady used smelled a ton like ketchup and it turned me off from it my entire childhood, lol. Maybe it was an iodine smell or something?

I have a theory: Mayo players' skills were sharper, because they were playing for their team's victory all the time, whereas ketchup players became more passive while playing against each others, thus losing interest and not being at their best shape when actually confronting the "enemy". But hey, that's just a theory. A game theory!

I was on team Mayo and I was connected with another Mayo team for my first battle at the very start of the Splatfest and again at the very end of Splatfest. Both of those times my team formed quickly and then their was a longer wait before the other mayo team was suddenly there. I'm not really a pro player or anything but there were a few times when the team I was on completely dominated the ketchup team, I think once my Mayo team was completely dominated, but most battles seemed very close. I had a lot fun though and it was nice to be on the winning side.

For those who are calling foul at Nintendo's matchmaking consider this; when the large majority of players are on the same team you can either play your own team and still have a chance to build up your points to get more seashells or you can spend the majority of the time waiting to get lucky enough to get matched with a team with not enough players to go around. I know what I would rather be doing.

I was on team mayo and I assumed we would lose for sure. I played the first night bout a couple hours in and I got absolutely destroyed. I have the original Splatoon and played a good amount, I'm not the best player but I can definitely hold my own and finish at or around the top in most battles win or lose. I don't know what it was but I lost NINE straight games any one point NINE!!! I've never had that kind of losing streak in any of my time playing Splatoon 1 or 2, and the matches were not close most of them we were losing were like 63% to 31% or something right around there.

It sounds like some people had the same problem but reversed with team mayo destroying people on team ketchup witch I find interesting cause where the hell were all those good mayo players cause they were not on my team ever haha. I played some on Saturday afternoon and it seemed to balance out with me winning bout half my battles or a little more but I do think something was a little strange in matchmaking cause it's never felt that way in a Splatfest before. Well at least it was still great fun and the best team won......

TEAM MAYO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Good Splatfest everyone until next time 🤘

@AeronaI know how you exactly how you feel. On the last match of the Splatfest at like 8:58pm I was 4 points away from champion rank so I had to win or else stay at defender. Luckily we won so I got 7 more sea snails than I would have at defender rank which is pretty big so I lucked out fortunately. Sorry that you had the other expierience but it's all in the fun of Splatfest and I can't wait till next one.

I played well over 10 hours of this Splatfest, and played against my own teammates 9 times out of 10. What irritated me the most though is that not only did Ketchup win popular vote by a very large landslide, but they only lost regular battles by one single point in North America, I think it was about 49-51 in favor of Mayo, and the catch is that you couldn't do team battles at all and even change the number UNLESS you had 3 OTHER FRIENDS with Nintendo Switch's that ALL happen to choose the same team. I have exactly 3 friends with Switch's, and 3 of us chose the same team, and the one other chose differently, which flat out disabled all of us from playing Teams. I'm bothered by this because teams is taken into account for winning the overall Splatfest. It just felt like a copout to me honestly, since all the K versus K matches (and there were a LOT of them, trust everyone here saying that) counted for absolutely nothing.

Of course our team mayo won, it's the only condiment which doesn't make your food taste like just the condiment (though probably the many ketchup vs ketchup battles eschewed the battle numbers in our side. But a win is a win!)

Jokes aside, It was my first splatfest ever and I loved it, can't wait for the next one. So much fun even just reading the fanatic posts on either side was funny.

I played on Euro (UK) Team Mayo to "Mayo King" rank and the battles were pretty intense - it felt like we all played hard for our wins and, in the games I played at least, I'm sure we won at least 70%. However, there were a number times I could tell Team Mayo was slightly short-handed because I'm level 15 (still pretty new) and was fairly-regularly getting teamed up with players in the Level 7 range, while our Team Ketchup opponents were consistently Levels 25 to 40 (I was playing late at night). Admittedly, we got stomped pretty hard in a few of those cases, but it felt very satisfying those times where we managed a win against the odds. Was great to have 24 Super Sea Snails - now I'm just hording them!

@Dang69 I'm American, but live in the UK. All I can say about the Mayo comparison is this: I personally like Mayo in the UK way better. I was a life-sworn anti-Mayo person in the US (apart from in homemade Ranch Dressing), but in the UK the flavour is just somehow way nicer and I use it all the time now: on sandwiches, "chips" ("Fries" to my fellow Yankees), even straight on salads. However, I've gotta admit that excellent food is not a British specialty as a very general statement, imo... food comes in distant second to moar drink!. Visit Italy if you want mind-blowing food.

@daveisbored In my matches I beat ketchup almost every single time. Ketchup ended up fighting itself more than anything because people mostly chose marina side again regardless of choices because they are obsessed with cartoon chicks that look like children. As far as I know ketchup vs itself nets 0 points so mayo as long as they won most would win even with less matches.

I saw this was coming. I chose Mayo because I like Mayo and I knew about the continuation of Splatfest exploits from Splatoon 1, where effort beats popularity from all the skilled players. I would prefer it that way, if a Splatfest topic is dull for me to dont care. To be fair, it was close, despite knowing the system, but you cant keep relying on Marina forever. There will be at least one topic that will make you switch over from Marina. This Splatfest was another example for me. If you want a true rumble of a Splatfest, better hope the popularity count is more... Even sided.

It was close for Cake vs Ice Cream. We really did not know back then how they were going to score on Splatfests. We just did it blind... And that Splatfest was before the game release so it was a time to test the game on the Switch.